Brennan, F: Race Rights Reparations Institutional Racism and The Law

In this new book Fernne Brennan has made an important and highly original contribution to the study of institutional racism . She links this insidious phenomenon, which first came to public awareness in 1999 through the Macpherson Report on the failure of the police following the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993, to the issue of reparations for slavery. Brennan has already made a significant contribution to this field by editing, with John Packer, the collection Colonialism, Slavery, Reparations and Trade: Remedying the Past? (Routledge 2012). This new book, passionately argued and supported by wide-ranging research, analyses institutional racism as a modern legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. It is not simply a work of legal history. Brennan goes further: she provides carefully considered proposals for reparation, meeting the many objections which have been made. Brennan identifies a new social movement for reparations, on a global scale. Readers will be challenged and, I hope, inspired by Brennan's work.  Professor Bill Bowring, Barrister, Director of the LLM/MA in Human Rights, School of Law, Birkbeck College, University of London